


Fear of Loss

by reeby10



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bedside Vigils, Coma, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Hospitals, M/M, Major Character Injury, Minor Character(s), Not Really Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 00:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15449121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reeby10/pseuds/reeby10
Summary: When Fisk finds Wesley, he fears the worst. But somehow Wesley isn't quite dead, and that gives him a chance to come to terms with some feelings he hadn't realized he had.





	Fear of Loss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wallflowering](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wallflowering/gifts).



> **ETA:** 1/19/19 fixed some punctuation and formatting.

“He’s in here, sir.”

Fisk felt his heart drop into his stomach as soon as he entered the room. Things had not looked good before then — he couldn’t imagine a scenario where Wesley wouldn’t answer one call from him, much less dozens, unless he was dead — but somehow he’d held onto a sliver of hope. Now, though, he could see the blood, feel the stillness of the air. His worst fears were confirmed.

The others hung back as he approached the table, the steady thump of his footsteps the only sound in the room. Anger buzzed loudly in his ears, bubbling just under the surface of his skin. It was a sensation he was very familiar with, but now it was accompanied by a dread that took his breath away. He wanted to stop, turn back, let someone else deal with this. But he owed Wesley far better than that.

There was still a chair on the other side of the table and he grabbed it, setting it beside Wesley’s body and sitting. He took Wesley’s hand in both of his own, squeezing it for a moment like he never had before — too familiar, too intimate. He wished… well, there was no point now in wishing he’d done things differently.

He wasn’t sure how long he just sat there, looking at Wesley’s far too pale face. His mind was blank, just a static of grief and rage that left no room for thought. His eyes were wet, but no tears would fall. Fisk had learned long ago that tears wouldn’t do anything for him, wouldn’t help the hurt go away.

Moving slowly, he leaned forward and kissed Wesley’s forehead — soft and reverent in his almost overwhelming grief, so at odds with how he usually was — then let his hand drift down the side of Wesley’s too still face, coming to a rest on his neck, blood splattered but somehow still vulnerable. It rested there for a long moment before he realized something was off. Wesley’s skin was cold under his hand, but miraculously, he could make out the faintest heartbeat where chin met neck.

“Call in my doctor!” Fisk roared before he’d quite realized what he was doing. He could see the men at the door staring at him, wide eyed, and he growled. “What part of that did you not understand? He’s still alive so I want the doctor here _immediately_.”

They scrambled to obey, the room clearing within seconds, but Fisk’s attention had already returned to Wesley. Even knowing there was some life left in him, it was hard for Fisk to see anything except the paleness of his skin and the blood crusted everywhere. It seemed impossible that Wesley had survived such an ordeal; Fisk just hoped the doctor would arrive in time to ensure he stayed alive.

If not… well, he needed someone to take his still simmering rage out on.

***

The doctor came in again, glancing warily at Fisk before going to check on Wesley. Fisk could tell from the man’s face that there still wasn’t a change from the diagnosis given hours ago, when Wesley first came out of surgery. He was in a coma and they didn’t know when, or if, he would wake from it.

Fisk hadn’t left the hospital since they arrived the day before. He’d sat in the waiting room for the entirety of the fifteen hour surgery, not moving except to accept the occasional cup of coffee from one of his men, who had traded out guard duty throughout the day. He paid them barely any attention, his entire focus on waiting for the doctor to emerge.

When one finally had, the news hadn’t been good. It had taken every ounce of willpower Fisk had not to haul the man up against the wall and demand things he knew he wouldn’t get. He compromised by looming threateningly, making sure everyone in the hospital knew exactly what would happen if they didn’t do everything in their power to save Wesley’s life. By the way the doctors and nurses skirted by him, desperate not to catch his attention and his anger, he’d succeeded.

“No change,” the doctor told him, eyes trained on some spot on the wall. He waited for a response for a moment before leaving the room, steps too fast to be casual.

Fisk would have been amused if he didn’t still feel like his heart was held in a cold clamp in his chest as he watched Wesley on that bed. It seemed like a dreamscape somehow, Wesley surrounded by beeping machines, his chest rising and falling with eerie regularity as a machine helped him breath. No other signs of life in the stark white room. A nightmare, then.

Someone brought a cot in for him on the third day. He wasn’t sure who, too exhausted by then to know or even really care. At first he resisted it, not wanting to possibly miss anything by doing something so mundane as sleeping. After another day of not sleeping, he decided it was a reasonable compromise. He would still be there for Wesley, but he would take care of his most basic needs.

He rather thought Wesley would be happy with that. He never would have stood for Fisk not taking care of himself, if he had anything to say about it. And wasn’t that why Fisk was here instead of home?

It was in the middle of the afternoon, just over two week later, that something changed. Fisk had gotten used to the cadence of the machines keeping Wesley alive, every beep irrevocably seared into his mind and memory. That was how he knew by just the slightest change in tempo that something was different than every day before.

Fisk was on his feet and over to the side of the bed in seconds, heart pounding in his chest, eyes glued to Wesley’s face for any sign of life. A minute passes, then two, and he began to think he’d imagined it, the need for a sign that Wesley was recovering overcoming his own senses. Then he saw saw Wesley’s eyelids flicker, and he felt hope and fear seize him again.

“Wesley?” he asked, voice a quiet rumble in his chest.

For a moment he thought again that he’d imagined it, but then Wesley’s eyes slowly slid open, blinking several times before focussing, as best he could without his glasses, on Fisk’s face. He moved his mouth like he was trying to speak, but started coughing instead. Fisk reached for the glass of water on the side table and helped him drink, heart in his throat.

“What happened?” Wesley asked once he’d drunk enough. He sounded so unlike himself, but Fisk was just glad to hear his voice again. He’d thought for awhile he never would. “I was… shot?”

Fisk nodded stiffly, anger still prickling under his skin. He’d stayed out of all his affairs so far, so he didn’t know if they’d found who the shooter was. If any of his men were even looking without him looming over their shoulders. Somehow, that seemed less important than it would have before all of this happened.

The weeks in Wesley’s hospital room, spent almost entirely alone except for occasional visits by doctors or nurses, had given him nothing but time to think. He’d let his business interests fall by the wayside, trusting his men to take care of things without him. All his thoughts were on Wesley and what he’d felt when he first stepped into that room and thought Wesley was dead.

He’d never been a particularly emotive person. His emotions tended toward sudden surges of rage, not the softer and more subtler emotions that he saw in others. But when he saw Wesley there, bloody and still, he’d felt despair that went beyond just the fear of losing his best man, his right hand. It had broken his heart.

Despite the time to think, it had taken him a long time to come to terms with his feelings, foreign to him as they were. But he was not one to deceive himself, even in something like this. It only made sense to admit that the feelings that had so suddenly been revealed to him were love.

And standing by Wesley’s bedside, that was far more important than immediate plans for retaliation.

“You were shot and I thought you were dead, Wesley,” Fisk told him, feeling the words catch in his throat. He cleared it, not taking his eyes from Wesley’s face. “You’ve been here for weeks. The doctors weren’t sure you would ever wake up.”

Wesley frowned at him, eyes sliding away to catch at something on the other side of the room. “Have you been sleeping here, sir?” he asked. Fisk nodded, and Wesley’s frown deepened. “I’m sure you had better things to do than sit by my bedside.”

“Never,” Fisk said immediately, almost too forcefully. He tried to calm himself down. His anger had no place here when Wesley had just woken up. “I couldn’t leave. I was… worried.”

“Worried about me?” Wesley asked blankly, face gone strangely still. He looked down at his chest, pressing lightly at the bandages and only wincing a little. “You had to have been here for _weeks_. Why- You shouldn’t have stayed so long just for me, sir, you have a city to run.”

On impulse, Fisk reached out and took Wesley’s hand in his own, careful not to grip too hard. Wesley startled, but didn’t pull back, which Fisk took as a good sign. Few people could bear not to flinch from him, especially when he touched them. Wesley had always been one of them.

“I couldn’t leave you here alone. Not after-” Fisk broke off, taking a deep breath. He’d never had trouble with saying what he meant before, but somehow this was harder. He felt Wesley squeeze his hand, and that was all he needed. “Not after I realized I love you.”

Wesley inhaled sharply, and Fisk half started reaching for the glass of water again before Wesley shook his head, stopping him. He looked into Wesley’s face, feeling vulnerable in a way he wasn’t sure he’d felt before. It was almost a relief to see that Wesley looked as lost in this as he was. At least that meant they were on the same page.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Wesley said after a long moment. Fisk felt his heart seize in his chest, but Wesley squeezed his hand again and he relaxed, just a little. “I’m sorry for worrying you like that. If I’d known…”

He shook his head, tightening his grip on Fisk’s hand, then looked up and smiled. Pale as he was, it almost made him look like his old self. Not the Wesley that Nobu and Gaou and all of them saw, but the one only Fisk saw. The one he’d missed all these weeks, the one he’d been afraid he’d lost.

“I’ve always loved you, you know,” Wesley said, and Fisk could see the absolute truth of it in his eyes.

Slowly, careful of still healing wounds, Fisk leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Wesley’s lips. They parted beneath his immediately, drawing him in. Fisk let himself be lost in the feel of kissing Wesley, something he hadn’t even let himself imagine in all the weeks he’d sat beside Wesley’s bedside.

They pulled apart sometime later, and Fisk was surprised by how light he felt. The anger that bubbled constantly under his skin had dissipated, at least for the moment, in the face of Wesley returning his feelings. It wasn’t a feeling he was accustomed to. But, he supposed, it might be something he’d feel more often, with Wesley closer to him than ever.

“Call for Aiden,” Wesley said as he settled back against the bed, a smile still tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I’ll put him in charge of finding my… attacker. It should be simple enough. And then once I’m recovered, it’s back to making you king of this hellhole of a city.”

The rage returned a little at the mention of whoever had shot Wesley, but Fisk knew that it would be taken care of, and quickly, with Wesley back to direct things for him. And that, most of all, made all his worry worth it.


End file.
